The Gannets Invasion

[jpg68]

Una imagen del pasado verano por tierras escocesas que gustó a los editores de 1x, invitándome a dejarles un tuto completo de la imagen. El tutorial esta en este link.

 

Un saludo para todos.

 

 

 NIKON D4 ISO 360 Focal Length 70mm (70mm in 35mm) Aperture f/5.6 Exposure Time 0.0004s (1/2500)

 

[myriamnavas]

No me ves, pero en estos momentos estoy verde de la envidia!!!!

 

Increíble la foto, y que pulso y templanza, porque ese alcatraz iba directo a devorarte!!!

 

Los alcatraces son una de mis aves favoritas y desde hace tres veranos visito cada junio la isla de Saltee, en Irlanda, donde hay una numerosa colonia de alcatraces y ha sido imposible lograr una toma curiosa.  

 

Felicidades por la toma, está de premio.

[Sersh]

Hola,

me parce un fotón tre men dow!

te mete dentro de la toma, me encanta la expresión casi diabolica de los dos alcatraces saliendo del caos!

 

Un saludo y felicidades

[davidd]

Me gusta mucho,,,muy natural,,y bien ambientada

 

Saludos

 

David

[Cosimo]

Enhorabuena , ese alcatraz parece que se va a salir del monitor...

Un saludo

[Dubruti]

FOTON! muy wapo el bicho, buena sensacion de profundidad o de acoso jajaja

[chikonavas]

  Vaya foto chula....me dan ganas de dar un paso atrás para que no se me tire, jeje..... como siempre, una gran foto.

[Sento74]

Uffffff, qué fotaca señor    . Parece que iba a por ti       reclamando sus derechos de imagen. Felicidades !!!

 

Saludos

[Deer]

solo digo wow

[IRACM]

Vaya fotazo.

 

Solo espero poder sacar algún día fotos así.

 

Saludos

[Mamerto]

Invasión en 3D, espectaculares los dos del primer plano... un saludo

[sikelo]

Me parece buenísima don José.

Esta debería haberse dedicado a aquellos que piensan que sólo con "pepinos" de 400mm para arriba se pueden hacer fotos de fauna

Un abrazo.

[MarSal]

Espectacular ... magistral

No se por qué me vino a la mente como la imagen de una película, solo le faltan las franjas horizontales.

Un lujaso por donde se la mire.

¿El tutorial a qué viene?, ¿es acerca de las condiciones de la toma, cómo se tomó, procesado? pregunto porque no tengo idea al respecto.

Saludos.

[berna114]

Es una foto impresionante. ¡Y con una distancia focal de 70 mm! Enhorabuena, puedes estar orgulloso de esta foto. Es de esas que se recuerdan durante mucho tiempo.

[jpg68]

Cierto que si no estás logueado en 1x.com no puedes acceder a ver el tuto (CSH y edición de la imagen)..... le hago un C&P aquí....:

 

The Gannets Invasion

Tutorial by jose pesquero

It pays to do your research and plan well in advance for a trip to a small island off the eastern coast of Scotland, if you want to take fantastic images of the thousands of gannets that breed there each year, that is. When so many frenzied birds fill the sky, how do you maintain focus? What lens do you use? Where is the best place to be to get "the" shot? Find out those answers and plenty more here.

The picture was taken on July 8, 2014, on the Scottish island of Bass Rock after a six-month wait for this trip to the UK. The schedule was tight and the photographic agenda ambitious. First, there was the flight from Madrid to Manchester, followed by the drive up to Bempton Cliffs for a day and a half visit. We then continued on to Seahouses on the Farne Islands. This was followed by a visit to North Berwick for a day on the Isle of May. The final day, and the highlight of the trip, was our visit to the island of Bass Rock. 

"I was finally aboard the small fishing boat that would take us to the island — home to one of the largest breeding colonies of gannets in the world."

I always try to tie up all of the loose ends with detailed planning to make the most of every moment on my photographic journey. However, there are always meteorological uncertainties when setting the dates for a trip so far in advance (January), and this is particularly true considering the constantly changing weather of Scotland. Note that my worries were not unjustified, as cancellations of the boat trip to this island are quite frequent, mainly due to bad sea conditions that may occur. Also, keep in mind that this boat only runs once a week with eight photographers onboard, over a period of about three months. This is why just getting to land on the island would be an achievement. My fears disappeared when the great day of Bass Rock arrived. I was finally aboard the small fishing boat that would take us to the island — home to one of the largest breeding colonies of gannets in the world. 

The day dawned gray, promising rain, which didn't take long to appear and did not leave us during our entire visit to the island. It was almost an hour's sailing from Dunbar to Bass Rock. While approaching the island, we were shocked by the number of white dots surrounding it; they were thousands of gannets.

"You must look for creative and precise compositions of close-ups of the gannets for individual portraits, couples and groups."

The tour to Bass Rock is in two parts. The first is the landing on the island with a considerable height to climb above the level of the lighthouse. In this first part, you can see hundreds of gannets all around you just a few feet away. You must look for creative and precise compositions of close-ups of the gannets for individual portraits, couples and groups. This is the biggest challenge, as well as capturing the great number of continuous landings of gannets around you. You can use telephoto lenses ranging from 70–200mm to 600mm to try to get all different kinds of scenes. In my case, those two lenses plus a 300mm lens, along with my two Nikon bodies (D4 and D7100), a waterproof cover for the lens and a tripod were all used to capture as many different shots as possible in Bass Rock. 

"Half a dozen boxes of fish were waiting to be thrown from the boat (referred to as chumming) to elicit the madness of the 'gannets invasion.' "

The second part of the tour is "chumming." We returned to the boat, left the island and moored about 300 yards (275 meters) off the island. Once we started to leave the island, dozens of gannets from above began to follow us. Half a dozen boxes of fish were waiting to be thrown from the boat (referred to as chumming) to elicit the madness of the "gannets invasion." 

We eight photographers tried to place ourselves at the best possible positions on the boat. As soon as the ship was turned to a favorable position for the wind and waves, the gannets that had already begun to follow us, knowing well that food was waiting for them, took up their positions. 

Seeing a cloud of gannets flying over you is truly impressive. 

 

"At first I was overwhelmed by all of the movement around me, almost losing a sense of where I needed to point my lens."

As the fish were tossed into the sea, the gannets began diving down like arrows. I adjusted the settings on my 70–200mm lens mounted on the D4. Since the gannets were close, there was no problem with distance; however, all possible autofocus speed was needed. I had a clear idea in my mind about what I wanted to get: one was of gannets entering the water at the precise moment their beaks touched the surface; the other was scenes of gannets in flight. At first I was overwhelmed by all of the movement around me, almost losing a sense of where I needed to point my lens. I realized that I had to maintain complete concentration at that moment. I found that my best choice was to focus on one gannet in the air and follow him while shooting continuously. 

I remember having to change memory cards during the chumming. I took no less than 1,500 photos in just over half an hour of this frenzy. And by "frenzy" I am referring to both the gannets and the photographers. Obviously, 90% of the images ended up in the trash. This was one of the good captures.

POST PROCESSING

The image was processed in Adobe Camera Raw, Photoshop CS6 and Nik Software's Dfine and Viveza plugins.

1) These are the settings I used in Adobe Camera Raw.

 

2) I then exported the image to Photoshop CS6 for the final processing. It would not require substantial processing, just balancing the light and highlighting the protagonist while maintaining the overall gray tone of the cloudy day. I always try to respect the authenticity of the original picture, although sometimes I like to add an artistic touch to take advantage of a good bird pose or similar subject.

Original image.

3) I did not want to see any gannets cut off by the frame's edges in the final version, so I decided to remove them. I selected the “partial” gannets along the edges and applied the Content-Aware tool (Edit > Autofill > Content-Aware).

4) Then I proceeded to reduce the noise in the image with the Nik Dfine plugin using the default settings. 

5) Back in Photoshop, I applied a Levels adjustment layer, checked the histograms of the three channels (Red, Green and Blue) and then adjusted the endpoints. To do this, I moved the sliders until they just touched the pixel information for each channel. That is, on the left side, the slider was moved to the right, up from 0, until it just touched the pixel information in the histogram. On the right side, the slider was moved to the left, down from 255, until it just touched the pixel information as well. This was done for each channel.

6) In Nik Viveza plugin, the main gannet was selected with a Control Point, and the Brightness was increased only in that area. 

7) Returning to Photoshop, I added a Brightness/Contrast adjustment layer to the overall image, increasing Brightness to +5 and Contrast to +6.

8) Finally, I sharpened the image by applying the High Pass filter. To do this, I duplicated the background layer, and with this layer active I selected Filter > Other > High Pass. I changed the Radius to 1.9 and then set the layer blending mode to Soft Light.

TIPS

1) Understand your equipment: choosing the best possible camera/lens combination is essential.

2) In this case, the choice of camera with the highest frames-per-second rate combined with a short telephoto zoom lens was the right decision.

3) An accurate weather forecast for the place and time of the shoot will result in better pictures.

[lagier01]

Fotón compañero, cada vez tengo que aprender mas de ti, un trabajo excelente, felicidades,

 

Un abrazo.

[iñikon]

Si señor, una excelente imagen que muestra perfectamente el frenético caos que reina en el lugar. Muy interesante desde luego el como se hizo.

[MarSal]

Buenísimo, muy disfrutable el relato, toda una aventura fotográfica.

Las recomendaciones y el "cómo se hizo" se agradecen mucho. Un trabajo genial de principio a fin.

 

"You must look for creative and precise compositions of close-ups of the gannets for individual portraits, couples and groups."  +10

 

PD: mis conocimientos de photoshop son bajísimos, voy a buscar información acerca de la herramienta que mencionas "content-aware"

[Portfolio Marcelo Panozzo]

Excelente imagen...al momento de observar la foto lo primero que atinaron mis ojos a hacer fue a dirigirse a la mirada del alcatraz principal......creo que eso es mérito a la muy buena toma en una distancia focal tan corta, y con esa lente....sana envidia se siente cuando veo estas fotos. Felicidades amigo !!!!

[luli2000]

Uf, pedazo de foto y envidia que me das.

 

Salud.

[mgll]

Dobles gracias,por ese foton con tanta fuerza y por el como se hizo,enorme.

Un saludo.

[Gecko]

De premio......sin mas

[sikelo]

Juer, don José.

Creo que es la quinta vez que entro para verla.

¿Dónde se vota la foto del mes?

Después de ver lo que has usado –por supuesto- y comparar con la primigenia “con lupa” (que si no, no lo veo ni de conya) hay un pequeño rodal justo en el lugar en el que estaba el ala solitaria y negruzca del margen de la derecha, precisamente encima del horizonte.

No sé, igual, o seguramente, me pasaré por aquí otras 5 veces más.

Saludos.

[jevifer]

Impresionante fotografía y todavía más la pose del alcatraz. Enhorabuena.

[Alejiga]

Foton¡¡¡¡